Leap Day

All in all, a fabulous Leap Day today.

I got a number of letters written and mailed out today.  I hope they are able to get the cancelation stamp from today.  I meant to send out a slew of postcards to friends (like I did on the previous Leap Day), but that just didn’t happen.  ::shrugs::  Oh well, I have four years to prepare for the next Leap Day.  I also want to write a letter to myself to be opened on the next Leap Day.  I’ll finish that up and put it in my Polar Bear box….which reminds me.  I still need to do my Polar Bear Day celebration/ritual as well.  This past year as certainly taught me that the calendar is man-made, and my rituals and holy days don’t subscribe to that.  I will be keeping my schedule from now on.  The calendar is merely a suggestion.  I would do well to remember that.

While at Barnes & Noble today, I picked up a new oracle deck – Crystals: The Stone Deck.  A total impulse purchase, but damn it’s gorgeous.  I also find a trinket bowl for my gemstones that I want up at work.  It’s actually a candle holder, but it’s exactly what I wanted.  ::chuckles::  And on the drive home, my inner snark came out.  After listening to my coworkers make fun of crystals, I will have my dish of crystals, and this crystal deck up there.  ::chuckles:: 

I don’t have to push back against my coworkers.  But I also don’t have to back down.  I will quietly stand my ground and show them who I am.  Now I just have to figure out what sigil I will draw on the dish before putting my gemstones in it.  ::smiles::

I love the posts my friend Dusty makes.  He is always so unapologetically and enthusiastically positive.  I seriously LOVE reading whatever he posts.  It always brings a massive smile to my face because you can just feel his soul-level giddiness over it.  I want more of that in my life.  So that’s my new goal for March.  To find and do and CELEBRATE the things that make my soul happy.  And that’s what I want to share on Facebook.  I’m tired of the negative shit.  I really am.  I’m not saying to ignore the negative shit that’s going on.  I just don’t have to wallow in it.  And I don’t have to spread it around either.

Better Day

Feeling better today that I was yesterday.  It always helps to have a nice quiet day at work.  Dustin isn't here AND I get to wear jeans today.  Woohoo!  ::laughs::

I'm contemplating cutting my hair.  It really needs a trim badly.  But I'm thinking of cutting off a good chunk.  Wish I was ballsy enough to go for the half shave look.  ::chuckles::  But I'm not there yet.  And I would love to dye it something different.  Honestly, I've toyed with going blonde or pure white.  I think pure white would be fun.  I just don't know how damaging that would be to my hair and what the upkeep would cost me.  

Ah finally got the visualization homework done for the Coven.  I'm SO behind on all of that (again).  Next up is the colors, candles, and chakras homework.  Then I can move on to the stones homework, and finish up with the herbs!  I really should do a better job of keeping up with this stuff and not letting it pile up.  But apparently I put the Pro in Procrastination.  ::chuckles::

Tired

written: Feb 07

There is something incredibly disheartening about listening to your coworkers make fun of a belief you have.  Granted, my coworkers don't know I'm a witch and that I work with crystals and things.  But listening to them make fun of a crystal book the library just ordered, really reminded me that I'm definitely the minority here.

And I'm seriously tired of it.  I was getting grumpy at myself for my knee-jerk reaction of aversion anytime something Christian popped up on my Pinterest while I was scrolling through for ideas for my story times.  But, honestly, it's because Christianity is so accepted and I'm tired of my religion not being so accepted.  

I mean, for example.  WitchFest in Austin already knows of a number of Churches and Individuals that are planning on demonstrating against the event and the people coming to enjoy it.  Could you imagine if we did the same for any sort of Church rally or Church camp?  And of course, the people hosting WitchFest are strongly urging everyone to just ignore the hecklers and to not engage.  Which I get.  But at the same time, why the fuck do we always have to lay down and let them walk all over us?  Why do we have to be the meek and civil?  When are we allowed to be outraged at their prejudice?  When are we allowed to push back?  When are we allowed to be protected from this continued bigotry?

I dunno.  I'm just TIRED of it.  I am halfway tempted to buy a Church of Satan bumper sticker to put in my cubicle.  ::chuckles::  I wouldn't put it on my car, because I can't afford people to fuck it up due to the bumper sticker.  Realistically, I will be bringing my little bowl of crystals up to work.  One of my new pen-pals did an ATC (artist trading card) of Sekhmet for me, that I want to bring up to work as well.

The Lady with the Snake

I seriously just had a great interaction with a patron.  She's having a rough go right now, 8 months pregnant, with a 3-year-old, and she's recently divorced.  So we spent the hour I was on desk, looking for books to explain babies to her 3-year-old, plus discussing the current issues she's facing with her kiddo (acting out), and then moved on to Montessori education.  She was seriously, SO GRATEFUL to just have a moment to talk with an adult about all of these things.  Seriously glad I could help her out.

Apparently I am known across the little city I work in as the Lady with The Snake.  A lady who works at the historical park called, saying she heard someone on our library staff had a pet snake.  I told her that was me.  ::chuckles::  She asked if it would be possible for me to bring my snake out on March 6^th.  She’s doing a program for pre-k kiddos specifically about snakes and would love to have one on hand to show them.  I told her that I would have to clear it with my boss, but that I would certainly be interested in doing this.  Well, I got the green light today to do it.  So I’ll call her tomorrow and let her know.  ::smiles::  I am seriously looking forward to it.  I love any opportunity to show her off and show people that snakes aren’t these terrible creatures.

Tuesday Ramblings

I was so tired last night by the time my shift was over.  Driving home, I was down in the dumps because I had just enough time to go home, eat something, check the mail, and then I would have to go to bed.  I do not like that late day. It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't have to be up early the next morning.

I am noticing that when I'm tired, my depression rears its head.  This is also the time that the self-injury desire rises up as well.  While it sucks to deal with this, at least I know that this is due solely to being tired.  And that once I get some rest, I will be fine.  I'm just a terrible, whiny brat until then.  ::chuckles::

I haven't doing that great in LetterMo this go around.  I certainly have not mailed out one letter a day.  But I'm refusing to beat myself up over it.  I'm just doing what I can do, and be happy with that.  Maybe next year, I'll prep a bit better and can do a better job of mailing something out every day.  And honestly, I'm enjoying the pen-pals I currently have.  It's a good pace.  

Other than that, most of my work day has consisted of putting together various programs for the library.  I'm chipping away at next week's story-times.  And I've begun working on some of my programs for the summer as well.  And I plan to recycle some of the previous story times, so I'm not constantly re-inventing the wheel.  

Honestly, the most time consuming part is finding the right books for each week.  The baby story time is easy.  We have a set of books specifically for this, and then I just have to pick one more board book and done!  Toddler and Preschool are harder, as I have to look through the ton of picture books we have, to find ones that aren't too long for their attention spans.  But I am certainly getting to know our collection of picture books and board books this way, so I will try to focus on it being a positive thing.

Elevating the Self

written: February 24

I am going to get back into the habit of daily writing.  I just feel like I'm breezing through life right now, but am not grounded in it.  Journaling helps me ground.  Helps me to really stop and look and experience my life.

I'm also working on Elevating My Self Worth as well.  I need to take better care of myself.  Last night, Aesa mentioned changing the way she thought about exercise.  She said that bodies are MADE to move, so she's looking at exercise as a way to celebrate her body and movement.  That really resonated with a flash of insight I had in the shower before heading to Coven Class -- that I need to celebrate my body more.  I need to express my own worth more in taking better care of my body and my Self.  I chuckled because it reminded me of Luciferianism/Satanism -- the Elevation of Self -- the taking Pride in one's Self.  So yeah, that's where I'm headed.

And it's a good time to kick these things into motion, as last night was the New Moon.  The perfect time to set intentions for the lunar cycle.  So yeah, this lunar cycle, I will be putting myself first in a lot of things.  I will make self Care a priority and will be choosing to focus on things that make me feel better.

Started that off today with some coloring in my BuJo (I did a pixel art of shamrocks).  I also took Josey pup for a short walk.  We both need more of that in our lives.  So the plan for that is to walk her every day, at least a short walk.  I can definitely do that on Monday mornings before I head into work.  And the rest of the time, I'm home by 6:30 usually, so we can squeeze in a short walk once I get home and before I feed her dinner.  In March, I'll be adding yoga back into my routine.  I really liked the daily yoga challenge I did last year with the Yoga by Adriene, so I'll begin that again.  

I've been feeding myself the myth that I "don't have the time" to do these things.  Yes I do.  I just have to choose those over playing Uno on Facebook.  Over sitting and zoning out on Facebook.  True, my free time has been drastically cut due to working full time now, but I still have free time that I'm just frittering away on nothing substantial.  

And I definitely want to do more work in my Witch's Journal.  I've sketched out some page ideas, but haven't done anything beyond that.  I want to keep better records of the Coven rituals as well, and that will certainly go in this journal.  My Initiation is rapidly approaching, and I know I will want to write that stuff down.  It's an all day thing, but I'm seriously excited and looking forward to it.

Doom & Misery

written: February 08

I am mostly over the Stomach Plague of Doom and Misery.
It laid me the fuck out on Thursday. Beginning at midnight until 6 am, every hour, on the hour, I did my own personal rendition of The Exorcist. I pulled muscles in my stomach and back from the force of projectile vomiting I was doing. Plus there was the whole 102 fever, chills, and complete vacating of my bowels. I don’t know what I did to offend the GI Tract Gods, but holy hell, I repent!!!!! Why hast thou forsaken me????

Yeah, at 3 am, I could tell the route this was going, and called in sick to work. There was just no way I was in any condition to leave my bedroom/bathroom, let alone the house. I didn’t bother to take any of my medications, as I wasn’t even keeping water down. So why throw away money like that? Besides, one day of no thyroid or anti-depressants wasn’t going to make much of an impact.

Spent all day Thursday, sleeping and trying not to die.
No coffee at all.
No cigarettes.
Severely dehydrated.

Thankfully, I had Friday off. I spent the day slowly recovering. Eating a tiny bit here and here. Focusing on drinking water and gatoraid. And lots more sleeping. And had the mother of all headaches all day long from caffeine and nicotine withdrawal and severe dehydration.

I came in to work on Saturday to see that Dustin had moved all my story time stuff – which to be fair, he had to do the Preschool story time on Thursday – and somehow my cart is gone? That I had all my story time stuff on. AND he left me a fucking to do list. Like, are you shitting me?

He is lucky he wasn’t working that day. I’m working very hard to NOT be a dick. And to not take everything as a need for confrontation. And that he isn’t being a total condescending ass. But that is getting so hard to do. And I was seriously NOT in the mood to deal with that bullshit.

Cubicle and Stones

I’ve sat down now like 3 or 4 times, trying to write this entry. It isn’t even like I have anything terrible to write. I just would rather handwrite at this point. So this entry may end up being all over the place, but I had a few things I wanted to document.

January 31st
They finally finished up my cubicle at work, and it’s gorgeous.



Seriously, so pretty.



I can’t wait to really have the time to deck it out and set it up the way I want to. And currently, no one is at the other desk on the opposite side in my cubicle, so it’s all mine. ::chuckles:: I want to put together a small travel altar that I can take with me on my lunch break out into the park area. Once it gets warmer and stays warmer, I would like to spend some time out there each day.

February 1st
Blessed Imbolc!

Hazel Nut and I went to check out a new Pagan store. Man, underwhelming doesn’t even begin to describe this shop. Talk about TINY.

But at least they had some other venders there. I checked out Fortuna and she had these amazing gemstone oil holder necklaces. And my eyes immediately latched onto her Blue Lace Agate one, even though there were fluorite ones as well (and I typically gravitate to fluorite). But man, I just couldn’t take my eyes off of that necklace. And add to the fact that the top screws off and you can put a tiny bit of oil inside it?



Yeah, I bought it. ::chuckles::

The whole reason I wanted to check out a new Pagan store is because I wanted to pick up some specific stones to have up at work. But Fort Witch was a total bust on that front. So after I dropped Hazel Nut off at her house, I went over to the local New Age store. I had forgotten how expensive they are, which is why I rarely go there, even though it’s only like 5 blocks from my house.

I ended up snagging a whole bunch of stones:



Starting by the necklace is:
Hessonite Garnet (mental clarity, confidence, emotional healing)
Pyrite (growth, prosperity, enhances self-confidence)
Bronzite (courage, serenity) – total impulse buy
Below Bronzite is Smoky Citrine (promotes cheerfulness, trust, strengthens self-belief)
Next to Smoky Citrine is Onyx (encourages happiness and good fortune, absorbs and transforms negative energy, helps productivity and decision making)
On the purple bag, starting at the left:
Silver/Blue Topaz (spirit communication, stimulates self-confidence and the ability to think through complex concepts and ideas)
Smoky Quartz (protective aura, clears negative energy)
Gabbro (soul retrieval, astral travel, god/goddess connection) – total impulse buy

I still need to add Amethyst (reduces anxiety, enhances self-control), Carnelian (promotes assertiveness without aggression, boosts vitality and confidence), and Aventurine (keeps optimism flowing, adventure, and the value of pursuing new opportunities). But I have those in my collection, so it’s just a matter of digging them out. ::chuckles::